


Songbird

by Aelwyn



Series: I Said I Wasn't Making More "Vignettes" But I Was WRONG [2]
Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (1963), Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/M, I got this stuck in my head and it would not rest until I had written it, Soulmates AU, hope you enjoy!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-09
Updated: 2021-02-09
Packaged: 2021-03-15 12:09:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,707
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29313870
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aelwyn/pseuds/Aelwyn
Summary: “A song can be more than words and music... when sung with soul a song carries you to another world, to a place where no matter how much pain you feel, you are never alone.”-Clay AikenOr, in other words, Whenever you sing your soulmate can hear your voice in their minds and feel your emotions in their hearts.
Relationships: Ninth Doctor/Rose Tyler, The Doctor (Doctor Who)/Rose Tyler
Series: I Said I Wasn't Making More "Vignettes" But I Was WRONG [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2139498
Comments: 8
Kudos: 131





	Songbird

**Author's Note:**

> ALL RIGHTS GO TO DOCTOR WHO, THE BBC, AND ANY OTHER KNOWN AFFILIATES. THIS IS A NOT FOR PROFIT FANWORK.
> 
> The song for this fic is “Never Stop (Wedding Version)” by Safetysuit and can be listened to here:
> 
> https://youtu.be/iGdDC8y6Q4k

“Theta! Pay attention!”

“Ma’am,” Theta Sigma swallowed, ducking his head and biting his lip as his classmates snickered at him. “Sorry, Professor. My soulmate was... singing. And it was really... really catchy.” He made an effort to stop tapping his foot along to the rhythm and felt his cheeks flame with embarrassment.

“Block your soulbond like the rest of your classmates,” Kasnegar sighed, pinching her nose. She frowned as the class started openly laughing, as Theta scowled and rubbed at his neck with a sigh.

“...I can’t, Professor.” She could see it was burning him to admit to it. “My- I’m practically a Null telepath by Gallifreyan standards. So... I. I can’t. Block my soulbond that is.” His shoulders slumped as he focused on the board again. “I’ll try to ignore it. ...Sorry.”

“See that you do,” Kasnegar muttered, annoyed.

“I don’t understand why people hate acknowledging their soulbonds,” Theta sniffed, swiping at his nose. His legs swung off the edge of the rock he was sitting on, and he scowled as his elder brother shrugged beside him and bent down to ruffle his hair. “Hey!”

“Just because everyone has one, doesn’t mean everyone wants one,” Braxiatel offered.

“ _You_ don’t try to block _yours_ , though. Even though it’s easy for you _to_ do.”

“I never said I was a part of that lot. But the majority of Time Lord society _is_ like that, Thete. I know you can’t block it, but you have to become used to ignoring it.” Braxiatel frowned, sadness flickering ever so briefly in dark, cool blue eyes. “My soulmate does not often sing, and she constantly blocks the connection. I have heard her voice only twice in my entire life.”

“I’ve got an entire _concert_ going on in my skull,” Theta muttered, scratching at his temple with a frown. “It’s not as easy as you make it sound to ignore. And she gets sad when I do... She’s not telepathic, but she’s got a lot of passion, and I get the idea that she doesn’t have a lot of people in her life who bolster her self-confidence in the way that I do.” He hummed softly for a moment, a familiar and lyrical tune, and fell silent. “She wants to be a concert singer I think, she’s always singing, or humming, or whistling...”

“She sounds... lovely,” Braxiatel replied hesitantly, raising an eyebrow. “And extremely _non-terrestrial._ Do you know what species?”

“No. I she speaks a language that’s been adapted so many times from its original form that she could be literally anywhere and any when, I don’t know how to track it down to a specific spot... But our lifespans can’t be _too_ mismatched, the universe doesn’t do that to soulmates. It’s the only exception in the cruel reality of universal life.”

“I’d argue on the grounds of pragmatism if that weren’t a statistically-proven fact. As it is, the chances of Time Lords finding their matches is extremely uncommon.”

“That’s because we’re boring.” Brax snickered at that and Theta grinned.

_“You are my sunshine, my only sunshine, you make me happy, when skies are grey... You’ll never know dear, how much I love you, please don’t take, my sunshine away...”_

“Your soulmate is weird, Theta,” Koschei muttered, wincing as his friend sang along with her in whatever strang, non-Gallifreyan language it was she was singing in. He rolled his eyes and tossed a pebble into the bushes, scattering the flutterwings that had been perching there. Theta broke off in his soft song to glare at his friend, moving the pile of small stones out of reach and frowning. They were supposed to be studying in the Academy gardens, but Koschei was uninterested and Theta had noticed a pattern with his soulmate in that she would sing or hum intermittently for around a twelve(ish) hour period before going entirely silent. He guessed that she slept the rest of the time, but that meant he wasn’t able to get her attention without being rude when she was asleep. For all he knew, depriving her of that sleep could make her extremely ill.

“You’re soulmate’s on the other side of the planet from us, right?” Theta asked. “So when you sleep they’re awake?”

“Don’t care to sing to them anyway,” Koschei said unconcernedly, shrugging. He tapped his temple. “Block them out all the time, don’t know who they are and don’t want to know.”

“It sounds lonely.”

“Yeah, well you sound annoying when you start singing with yours.” Koschei snipped. “Which is worse, huh?” Theta winced and crossed his arms tight to his chest.

~§§~

The Doctor sighed as he watched his granddaughter skip off into the ship in search of a bedroom, brow furrowing in concern. Arkytior had barely hit adolescence and had been touched by a Weeping Angel, sent far back into the past. Because the both of them had a soulmate on Earth, he had agreed to help her find hers if she helped him find-

...Well. Find her grandmother, actually.

That was the big clincher. He’d run from the arranged marriage that was haunting him on Gallifrey, stealing a TARDIS and taking to the stars, and had been restocking the cupboards when he’d run into the girl on a market asteroid confused and terrified at being separated from her family. Now they were stuck together, in a rickety old TARDIS. She had called the time capsule that, looking confused when he had no idea what she meant and having to explain. ‘Time And Relative Dimension In Space.’

She kept reaching out to him telepathically, kept reaching out to the ship. He hated that he could barely feel her on the edge of his awareness, and hated it even more that as the ship’s pilot he was unable to form a proper Pilot Bond with her.

The one comfort in this whole confusing expedition was that his soulmate kept singing.

Ian hadn’t been doing anything of particular importance in the console room, merely tapping his foot and humming the tune to ‘God Save the Queen’ as he fiddled with re-threading a shoelace through the holes on his shoe, but the Doctor looked on in confusion as Barbara’s head snapped up from the book she’d been reading to stare at him all the same. The Doctor’s shoulders slumped in disappointment. Susan had reacted in much the same way to David.

Sure enough, Barbara hesitantly joined in and Ian’s shoulders stiffened before he dropped what he was doing to stare at her with wide eyes.

They’d want to be going home soon, he knew. Everyone always wanted to be with their soulmate and the Doctor couldn’t fault the schoolteachers for wanting to find a path of their own together back on Earth.

He cast a glance at Vicki and winced. She didn’t understand yet, watching them in confusion. She would soon.

~§§~

His soulmate was singing some sort of early nineties pop song under her breath, and he chuckled. Jamie, who had been teaching Victoria the finer art of knife-throwing at a nearby tree, paused and blinked at him. He just shook his head, waving a hand from where he was perched on a branch high above them, and closed his eyes to murmur the words along with her.

Her soft, child’s voice faltered in confusion and the Doctor swallowed. His voice had changed, and it was for that very reason that he hadn’t sung since his regeneration. Trepidation made his hearts hammer wildly in his chest, and the TARDIS mentally laughed at him. That was one of the good things about his regeneration, at least. The reconfiguration of his brain had made him a much more adept telepath.

Silence from his soulmate.

Drawing a deep breath, the Doctor continued singing the song she had started. After several moments of uncertain silence, he was gratified when she began singing with him again.

What must she think, he wondered. Did she think that her soulmate had switched to a new person, rathe than the person’s voice merely changing? She’d been quite confused when he’d hit adolescence long before her and his voice had deepened, but this was an entirely different thing to have happen.

At any rate, she was still singing with him, so that was a good sign.

...

Wasn’t it?

~§§~

_“I don’t want to set the world on fire...”_ Naturally, something exploded and smoke poured through the TARDIS console room. The Doctor could feel his soulmate’s amusement like a warm tickle in his chest as he resumed humming, adding on to the song for her benefit by singing, _“Oh no, there’s smoke everywhere...”_

If he hadn’t become so accustomed to her moods, he wouldn’t have been able to guess that she was laughing at him. But yes. She was. Cheeky little-

He was pulled out of his thoughts as a young woman came running in and used a fire extinguisher on his project, which caused such a cascade of dismay on his part that he was rendered speechless for a few minutes before he could summon the wherewithal to tell the stranger off.

“You’re a much stronger telepath than I remember,” the Master commented mildly as he and the Doctor circled one another, swords dancing lightly as they parried back and forth.

“Yes, well, first regeneration, fixed my problem. I’ve had a few centuries to strengthen and improve my telepathic abilities, and there hasn’t been much else to do as of late.”

“Understandable. Find your soulmate yet?”

“Not yet. But I will. Still ignoring yours?”

“Content to ignore and be ignored, thank you kindly.” The Master’s eyes narrowed slightly. “Stop eating my sandwich.” The Doctor shrugged, raising an eyebrow and taking a large bite out of it.

~§§~

“Why do you insist on keeping your soulbond unblocked?” Romana asked as they took tea in the Galley. The Doctor shrugged.

“My first incarnation was so weak telepathically that I was unable to. Imagine, four hundred years with an active soulbond. I was completely dependent on it. It would’ve been equivalent to cutting off my left foot, or- or something else rather unpleasant.”

“Mm.” There was a moment of silence, during which the Doctor eyed her over questioningly. Since regenerating two months ago, there had been several personality quirks that had made her more amenable than her previous form had been.

“Why do you ask, Romana?”

“My- my soulmate has never bothered to shield our connection, though I have been the...” her smile was wry as she paused for the right word. “ _Perfect_ little Time Lady and have constantly shielded my side of it. I don’t even sing, really. Never had the inclination toward it. But he has the most... wonderful voice, in both his forms, whenever I had a small occasion of weakness and let my guard down. And when he sings, I can feel-” she bit her lip. “He’s always so sad. I can tell he never expects me to acknowledge him.”

“You’re starting to wonder if you should start.”

“...Yes.” The Doctor shrugged.

“If you think it best, Romana. I can admit to you that I’m gallivanting about out here less because of the reason I give people, which is that I wanted to see the universe, and more because I want to find my perfect other half.” Romana turned a very lovely shade of crimson. “Something I said?”

“I... May already know who mine is, which is why it makes my unblocking our soulbond so... momentous a decision on my part, as he seemingly has little idea on the matter.” The Doctor blinked, then smirked as he took a sip of his tea.

“Do tell. Do I know him?”

“It’s... Irving...”

The Doctor choked and spit out his tea.

~§§~

Part of the reason the Doctor liked the Eye of Orion was because it made it so much easier to clear his head and indulge in the soulbond. Being telepathic, he could manipulate it a little bit. As his soulmate _wasn’t_ telepathic, he imagined that that was something she tacked onto the ‘list of things that are definitely weird about my soulmate’ list. But all the same, after her initial shock, she seemed to enjoy the added bit of awareness that came about when he _did_ manipulate it.

For instance, he could tell that it was winter where she was, because his entire body felt cold. Likewise, she was probably enjoying the summer conditions he was sitting in, a brief respite from the snow around her. He was humming, nothing really set or published, just a random tune that struck his fancy, and he chuckled as she enthusiastically joined in. So soon after his regeneration, she had yet to actually hear him sing. Hesitating slightly, he changed the melody and added in words from a song his soulmate had introduced him to.

He could feel her brief surprise before she shrugged it off and sang with him, their voices blending wonderfully together as they had always done regardless of what body he happened to be in.

Adric was currently showing Tegan and Nyssa around the TARDIS, or at least that’s what he assumed his companions were doing considering none of them had ventured out to join him, and there was no doubt in his mind that once they did Tegan would be complaining about not being back at Heathrow. Bossy Australian Air Hostesses were, apparently something that this body was willing to put up with but didn’t exactly feel enamored of. Now, if she were to just stop yelling at him for five seconds, they might actually be able to find some common ground...

“You’re not half bad,” Tegan commented lightly as she sat beside him on the grass.

“Mm. New vocal cords, testing them out. Lighter than my last body, most definitely. Possibly the most Tenor they have been, actually, though I’d have to do an in person comparison with my second incarnation and the authorities tend to frown upon things like that.”

“Bet your soulmate sounds different sometimes too.”

“She’s human, actually, far as I can tell. And English.” He raised an eyebrow and sat up from where he had been lying on the grass, smirking at Tegan’s entirely shell-shocked expression. “I mean. I think she is, anyway.”

“You mean it’s possible for people to have soulmates and not be from the same planet?” She asked weakly, looking somewhat pale. He nodded. “You mean my soulmate could be an _alien!?_ ” At that, the Doctor scowled.

“And if they were, would that be so bad?” He grumbled, looking away from her and pouting. “Is there some sort of Terran Taboo against interspecies relationships I’m not aware of that I should be?”

“I’m sure she’ll love you,” Tegan backtracked quickly, realizing she’d struck what was obviously a very insecure and long-standing nerve. “You were made for one another, after all. It’s just, I can’t see myself with anyone _but_ a human.”

“And did you ever stop and consider your soulmate might feel the same, if they are in fact of a different species?” She suddenly looked stricken.

“...Oh. I guess- I guess I’ll have to think it over,” she murmured.

“Adric used to think he was broken,” the Doctor said mildly. “Until he crossed over into this universe, he’d never heard his soulmate before. Apparently, the connection doesn’t traverse the walls between parallel universes. He _still_ hasn’t come to grips with the fact that the place he considers home is _not_ the place his soulmate considers home.”

“Well, how do you decide between the two planets?” Points to Tegan, she was extremely unnerved and confused, but she was most certainly inquisitive about things that interested her.

“It’s an unspoken rule that the person most tied down moves to the place where the other lives,” he replied breezily, smiling. “For instance, I already consider myself a citizen of Earth more so than I do a citizen of Gallifrey. Not hard, really. My people don’t exactly like me much. That’s fine, I don’t care much for them either. Plenty of friends on Earth- _Colleagues_. Did I mention, I had colleagues?” The bright grin he wore made Tegan blink. It wasn’t half as manic as the other him had been, more exuberant. He sort of reminded her of her cousin, actually. Well, one of them anyway. The other was a broody little storm cloud.

“Huh. That’s interesting. And quite honestly I can’t picture the idea of you- or the other you- holding down a job.”

“That hurts, Tegan,” he sighed dramatically, flopping down onto the grass again and not bothering to hide his grin.

~§§~

He wondered if there was a specific emotion for chocolate cake. Because the musical purring noise he was making as he dug into a slice of Evelyn’s promised - and apparently famous - chocolate cake was definitely piquing the interest of his soulmate, whose emotional state had shifted from confused to amused to... almost knowing, really. Hence the reason the Doctor was currently pondering whether or not chocolate cake had its own specific emotion.

_“Creme tangerine and Montelimar, a ginger sling with a pineapple heart, coffee dessert, yes, you know it’s good news... but you’ll have to have them all pulled out after the Savoy Truffle...”_

The Doctor chuckled as ‘Savoy Truffle’ floated through his mind, shaking his head slightly. A song penned for Eric Clapton’s love of chocolate, sung by the Beatles...

“What’s so funny?” Evelyn asked from across the table, arcing an eyebrow in amusement.

“There’s a specific emotion for chocolate,” the Doctor laughed, tapping his temple. “My soulmate picked up on it because of my humming, started singing ‘Savoy Truffle.’” Evelyn laughed at that.

“She sounds very... sweet,” came the reply, both of them smirking at the pun.

Carrot juice, the Doctor found, also had its own emotion. A decidedly negative emotion. And there was certainly no singing involved, just a hacking sound of disgust. Combine that with the wheezing involved in being forced onto an exercise bike for excessive periods of time when he already had plenty of exercise from running from things trying to kill him left little free time to sing, and it was due to that that he eventually snapped.

“Mel, just- for the love of Rassilon, leave me be!” He snapped, stepping away from her as she tried to give him more carrot juice. “Let me enjoy a cup of tea in peace.”

“Better not be any sugar or cream in that,” she muttered mutinously. He cast her a glare, dumping in exactly the amount of both he preferred, and stalked out of the galley and toward the library. She follows after. “Oh, come on Doctor. You’re ruining the regimen!”

“Melody Bush, this is my ship, and- in case you’ve somehow forgotten- this is _my_ body. In case you’ve _also forgotten_ , I never asked you to be _my_ aerobics instructor. I want to enjoy _my home and my designated tea time in peace_ , especially without someone dictating what I put in my tea. Have I ever, once accosted _you_ in such a way during your relaxation period? No, I don’t think I have. So, please. Please, _leave me alone_. I just-” He broke off, pinching the bridge of his nose, and sighed as he gentled his tone at her chastised expression. “I want some time to myself where I can sing to my soulmate, Mel. And I can’t enjoy it when you’re forcing me to do something I never asked nor wanted in the first place.”

“I’m sorry,” Mel sighed. “I’m a Type A personality, I take charge and then forget to consider other people’s opinions.”

“...Not sure that’s a-”

“Hm? Oh, no, that’s _on top of_ the Type A personality.” She extended a hand with a small smile. “Pax?”

“Pax. and ah- thank you, for understanding. Despite my less than cavalier approach to explaining my circumstances to you.”

“Don’t worry about it, Doctor. Enjoy your free time.”

“You as well.”

~§§~

Ace wasn’t much for singing. Then again, neither was he in his current body. It stood to reason that both of them found a tiny bit of time to sing anyway. It was an intrinsic part of the universe, singing. Everyone was constantly reaching out, connecting, conversing with one another through song. There were few who didn’t in some capacity at least hum or whistle. Ace was partial to sea shanties when singing, oddly enough, and they had an easy and pleasant tune that allowed him to enjoy rolling his ‘r’s with his first ever Scottish accent.

“Still singing like a canary, Doctor?” The Masted laughed. The Doctor scowled at him.

“I dread to think the kind of person your soulmate would have to be to be matched with you,” he muttered. The planet was exploding around them, the world literally falling apart, and they were bickering over the same old arguments.

“At least I know who mine is.”

The barb struck a particular nerve, one that the Master had known since they called themselves Theta ans Koschei, and the Doctor’s shoulders slumped in response to it. Using the Master’s overconfidence against him, he barely escaped in time to reflect on how they would always know just where one another’s weak spots were so that they could inflict the most damage...

He drifted in and out of consciousness, pain radiating throughout his entire body, ‘Madame Butterfly’ playing in the background. It was a lovely song to die to, really. Too bad it wasn’t his soulmate singing it.

~§§~

“I’m going to strangle your brother.” The Doctor dropped the book he had been reading and turned in his seat to face Romana with a grin, steepling his fingers together over a crossed knee and leaning in conspiratorially. His eyes glittered mischievously as he shook his curly chestnut bangs out of his face.

“Oh, good! I’ll find some rope. On what grounds are we going to be strangling him?”

“He won’t stop singing ‘My Heart Will Go On’ from that rubbish _Titanic_ movie at all hours of the day,” she groaned, flopping down in the seat next to him and massaging her temples. “I think he’s actually belting the chorus in his TARDIS somewhere, the brat.”

“Brattish Bureaucrat, thy name is Braxiatel,” the Doctor chuckled. He leant on the armrest and arched an eyebrow. “So? How is domestic bliss?”

“Much like a house cat, Brax makes it known as annoyingly as possible when he wants attention from me,” Romana sighed, draping an arm over her eyes. “I’ve been in meetings all day.” She cracked one eye open and peered around her arm at him. “Speaking of which, what do you want?”

“Do you remember our visit to Professor Chronotis?”

“I remember intending to go, but then we were sucked into that Time Scoop for the Death Zone and caught in a Time Eddy while your former selves had to outwit Borusa. Why?”

“Well, it was actually quite important that we visit, so I was wondering... might you want to take a break from Council, from the caterwauling of my brother-”

“My husband.”

“Semantics. Take a break from it all, bring your K-9 with us, and have a grand old time.”

“Oh, I don’t know...”

“Please?” She sighed at the puppy dog eyes and nodding, trying not to roll her eyes as he jumped from his chair in uncontained glee and sped off toward his TARDIS.

Blood dribbled from his mouth as he fell to his knees in a sea of red grass, his people regenerating or outright dying all around him, as the Daleks broke through into Arcadia. They would come for the Capital next, and then Rassilon would destroy all of reality to ascend to a higher plane of existence.

Hauling himself to his feet, the Doctor trudged painfully on a sprained ankle toward the Omega Arsenal. He had to end things. To end this. He walked through miles of sand, unwilling to be near his TARDIS for just such a moment. He didn’t want her to see.

His soulmate had stopped singing years ago in his time, petering off from bright enthusiasm into broken melody into deafening, hearts-wrenching silence.

He stared at the Moment and swallowed, this once beautiful voice that loved to hum melodies in the butterfly room now rough and rasping as he bit out each pained line of the song that had come to symbolize comfort and apology between them.

_“You are my sunshine... my only... sunshine. You make me happy- wh- mm... When skies are... grey... y-you’ll never know. My darling dear... how very much- I- I love you. Please. Please don’t take my- my sunshine... away...”_

~§§~

_She was like a spark of life, of sunlight, in a world that was grey and uninteresting. The moment he had seen her she had shone with pure, raw time. It swirled around her and coalesced, important, golden, radiant._

_She was a shop girl from the Powell Estates in London, 2005. She had left school to be in a band as a backup singer and had been torn apart by the lead singer and guitarist Jimmy Stone, her confidence beaten down to nothing, because she had been better than him. She never sang anymore, petrified of being ridiculed as Jimmy had done. Her best friend clung to her leg, one minute protective older brother and the next cowering like a whipped puppy seeking protection._

“Did I mention, it also travels in time?”

_She ran toward him and never looked back._

“I’m sorry,” Rose said softly.

“Why, for bringing your boyfriend on board?” The Doctor asked sullenly, squashing the panic clawing at the inside of his chest under a sarcastic quip. Rose rolled her eyes.

“He’s not my boyfriend. We aren’t anywhere close to a match, believe me. It was just that I felt sorry for almost gettin’ him killed, Y’know? I figure the least we can do is take him back to London.”

“You said you wanted to show him the stars,” the Doctor reminded her. She shrugged.

“That’s what spending the night in deep space is for, leave the door open for a little bit with the atmospheric shell. Get him to shut up about being superior to other people just ‘cause he’s clever. Seriously, Doctor. I don’t like him. But I feel bad for what happened and you and I both know how horrible redeye flights are just on myth if not experience, no one deserves to go through what he did and then have to go through that.”

“He left you behind.”

“He also told me not to touch the Dalek and I didn’t listen.” The name made the Doctor flinch and Rose noticed, biting her lip and hugging herself. She jerked her thumb over her shoulder. “I’m gonna go drag him away from the door, get him a room to crash in before we dump him back in England tomorrow. You gonna be all right?”

“Always all right, me.” The look she gave said she very much doubted it and he couldn’t blame her.

Once she was gone, he bolted. He ran for his little-used bedroom, slamming the door shut and sinking onto the floor with his back pressed against the side of the bed as he hyperventilated and fought to control his breathing as he fell into the grips of a full-on panic attack. They took everything, over and over and over again, and he was left with nothing. He had blood on his hands that an eternity of penance would never wash away. His bypass failed to engage, his head swam from lack of oxygen refreshing his bloodstream. Terror clutched at his chest and squeezed like a crushing vise.

Soft arms curled around his shoulders and sought his hands, fingers linking with fingers as Rose sat beside him and pressed her side against the sleeve of his leather jacket. Her head was on his shoulder, her human heat searing, her scent and heartbeat and heat and everything like a cloak shutting out the sensory input from the rest of the world.

“Hey,” she whispered softly, not saying anything else. Just being there. For that, he was grateful, and despite knowing better he leant into her embrace and whimpered in relief as his bypass finally engaged and flooded his system with life-giving oxygen. Rose bit her lip and sighed, taking a breath and hesitating for a few moments. Tense.

_“...You are my sunshine... my only sunshine...”_

He went entirely limp, boneless, sliding toward the floor with a release of breath and taking in a new one as Rose gently guided his head into her lap and ran her fingernails through his short-crossed hair, one set of their hands still clasped together. Her song seemed to explode from his mind, lodge in his hearts, and then spread like wildfire to the very tips of his tingling fingers and toes.

_“...I think you know, dear, how much I love you, now our sunshine is here to stay...”_

“Why did you stop singing?” He whispered hoarsely.

“I was gonna be a pop star,” she said bitterly. “So I left before my A Levels, there were some blokes in a band that were really nice. But the lead singer started raggin’ on me, dragged me down...”

“Jimmy Stone?”

“Yeah. And it just... it stopped being fun anymore. Didn’t even feel comfortable singing anymore, either, bein’ honest.” She smiled slightly. “Felt better since I found you.”

“You said no, the first time,” the Doctor murmured. She bit her lip, self-conscious.

“I know this sounds petty or whatever, but I wanted to be the one you came back for,” she muttered, blushing a very nice red as he stared up into her face. “Didn’t just wanna be a stray or somethin’.”

“You know me, you knew me before we met,” he said, blinking, sitting up properly. Rose rested her head on his shoulder again and he hummed with pleasure at that simple acceptance of his person from his soulmate. “How?”

“When I was little, I got in a fight with this girl after school on the playground about how my soulmate’s voice kept changing. She said some really nasty things and I sorta... ran off. Got lost in London. Ran into this airline hostess, literally ran into her. She bought me a Choc-Ice and waited for me to calm down, asked where I lived, got a cab to take me home...” Rose smiled. “On the way back I told her why I ran off and she told me that sometimes, people’ve got aliens for their soulmates. Said that sometimes the right door you need to be knockin’ on is a blue one. Never got what she meant by that til I saw the TARDIS.”

“Can’t believe you ran into her like that,” he guffawed.

“Who was she?”

“A friend. Used to travel with me and a couple other people. Tegan, her name was. Traveled with me, and with Nyssa- she’d lost her planet, actually- and Adric, he came from a different universe, and eventually Turlough, who got himself exiled to Earth for being a part of a plan to overthrow his planet’s government. She was... interesting, say the least.”

“Yeah?” Rose chirped, smiling that special smile and lightly nuzzling at his shoulder. “Who else ya travel with?”

“Well, I had a robot dog once, there was my sister in law before she became my sister in law, a pair of schoolteachers, an aerobics instructor...”

“Not a fan of you and Jack singing and dancing to ‘Single Ladies’ in the console room,” the Doctor sighed.

“Yeah, you gonna do something about it?” Rose teased. He opened his mouth to deliver a cheeky retort before realizing what she was actually asking, feeling his face heat as his jaw hung slightly slack and useless.

“Didn’t- Didn’t think you’d want me to, if I’m being honest.” She bit her lip to hide a smile.

“Hey, you’ve always been worthy of me. Universe says so, and even you can’t argue with the universe, yeah?”

“I’ll think on it, okay? It’s just- there’s certain things in my culture that I need to have a ponder on.”

“Fine by me. Just don’t ponder too long, yeah?”

“...Yeah.”

~§§~

He’d exploded into golden light right in front of her, her fiancé replaced with a stranger wearing his clothes. And the stranger was rambling on about moles and hair and who knew what else, barely pausing to breathe in a manic way that left _her_ breathless just considering the energy he had to be expelling as he dashed around the console like a lunatic, talking about Barcelona and dogs with no noses.

He stopped suddenly, as if frozen, before swallowing and walking warily toward her. Rose pressed her back against a coral strut, felt the TARDIS’ hum of reassurance, and took a deep breath.

“Rose, it’s me,” he said softly. “It- It never occurred to me to tell you why... why my voice sounded different in your head when I sang. I forgot that you didn’t...” he sighed when she flinched at his outstretched hand and ruffled his hair in frustration before stilling again, locking eye contact with her.

And he started ever so softly singing, his voice cascading through her mind, her heart, her soul, and with a choked sob Rose launched herself straight into his arms with such force that they went sprawling onto metal grating.

“Doctor.”

“Sorry, Rose. Sorry I forgot to say something.”

“I love you,” Rose whispered from where her face was pressed against his chest.

“Love you too,” he whispered back, pressing a kiss into her hair and holding her tight. She’d just said goodbye to her mother, trapped on the other side of a dimensional wall in a parallel world, using the fading energy of a supernova to do it. He held her tighter as he remembered her fingers slipping on the lever, pressing a more desperate kiss into her hair.

Bad Wolf. A Time Goddess with limited powers to control Time once the Vortex had released its hold on her. But the pair of them had an eternity together, in the TARDIS. She’d slowed reality around her to avoid falling into the Void. And they were together, and he planned on never letting go.

“I love you so much, Rose Tyler.”

**Author's Note:**

> Okaaayyyy... Yeah. So. Obviously, I can’t help myself. Here’s another tiny little soulmate AU.
> 
> Also: You’ll see that this inspired a work by Groovykat; if you love Romana and Braxiatel, definitely go read it!

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Songs](https://archiveofourown.org/works/29319018) by [GroovyKat](https://archiveofourown.org/users/GroovyKat/pseuds/GroovyKat)




End file.
